The Origin of the Horse -- an Introduction

This section of the Web site provides information on the evolution, migration and reintroduction of the horse to North America. Highlights to this section will include short video clips of an interview with the Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Nebraska, Dr. Michael Voorhies. Voorhies is an equine museum specialist. This section also contains references and links to the Ashfalls site in Nebraska, where hundreds of horses, rhinos, camels and birds perished when a thick cloud of volcanic ash covered this area. Some of the smaller animals died instantly while the larger animals may have succumbed to the ash days or weeks later.

Other features in this section:

• Evolution of the Horse Horses roamed the grasslands of North America for millions of years, slowly extending their range to most of the continents on earth. See how the early horse migrated across the Bering land bridge from North America into what is now Siberia.	• Equus Evolutionary Periods There are those who characterize the evolution of horses as more like a bush than a tree, with starts and stops and major jumps in the development of genetic traits. That bush is illustrated here.
• Ashfalls article by Mike Voorhies Hundreds of skeletons of prehistoric animals have been found in a volcanic ash bed buried beneath the rolling farmlands of northeastern Nebraska.	• Migration Animation Movement is the essence of a horse, and over millions of years horses migrated out of North America to cover the globe. See their migration and how they died out in their place of origin.
• Mike Voorhies explains the evolution of the horse in this VIDEO interview. Get Real Player free (Note, this will take you to RealNetworks. PBS is not responsible for content on external pages.)

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